Nordic walking

We've started doing nordic walking with my husband. Nordic walking is basically walking with poles. It's very popular here in Finland and it has spread from here very widely in the world. I like it very much while it's more effective than just walking, it's easy and a very simple way to improve your physics. And of course it's a good way to spend time with a hubby! Our walks last at least an hour and in that time we can talk together many things.

Nordic walking was developed into a fitness exercise with specific training equipment in co-operation with the Finnish sports equipment manufacturer Exel Oyj. Actually nordic walking poles has made it possible for the exel oyj to keep their factories open here in Finland. So if you decide to go for nordic walking choose poles from exel - the original walking pole maker from Finland! Exel has an office in 28 countries and well equiped sport stores should sell exel poles.

Knitting

On thing I love in holidays is the time you have to do stuff you don't normally have time to. I like knitting a lot. Now I found a new yarn from Novita called huopanen. The idea of the yarn is that you first knit what you want four times bigger that you want it to be and then you felt it in a washing mashing to the actual size. The outcome is anything but normal. It's thicker, stronger and warmer.

So during the christmas brake I knitted Viivi mittens out of huopanen. This is how the mittens looked before felting them. On background you can see our pet - cat I've knitted myself. Our other pet is around Viivi's neck. The snake is made of old socks. You know how the bottom wears out but the rest stays good. I decided to make those socks useful! Soon I'm going to do another one while we have a pile of old socks once again... I like recycling and making new of old materials! Actually i feel a little bit quilty if I throw something that might be useful to garbage can.

Now you see the mittens felted. Don't they look warm? I would like them to be little softer but Viivi thinks they are just perfect. Well, it was fun to make them and try jumbo knitting needles!

Epiphany

On Epiphany it's time to say goodbye to all the decorations and to the christmastree. We also light all the candles we have and vote for the best christmas card of the year. I've learned to love Epiphany day a lot. I enjoy the candles and when there are tens of them burning at the same time it's wonderful! Here are some pics of the candles

On Epiphany we also eat the gingerbreadhouse. Here's what's left off it:


Then we spread out all the christmas cards we got to the floor. We admire them for moment. Then we start choosing the best of the year. It's hard because christmas cards are so beautiful. There hasn't been a year we could have chosen only one. Last year we had to choose 4 best cards. This year there were three cards that wom our election. Here you can see them. Thank you for those who sent them to us! They brought us a special joy like all the christmas cards.

I keep all the christmas cards we get. I have a folder for them. it's nice to look at them every christmas time. Specially the hand made ones are so pretty and bring joy to me.

Now I want to wish all blessed year 2006! Hope that you enjoyed this christmas time and may the child of the christmas get a bigger part of your life this year!

Narnia

We went to see the movie of Narnia the other day. I really liked it. Even as a child I liked the book a lot. I think I read only the first one. The story is so good and the movie was very well made. My favourite was the sweet little Lucy and the mister Tumnus.

Five years ago Jonna got the book which has all the Narnia books in it as a christmas present. Juha started reading that to Jonna. Sometimes there was even a months gap in reading but it went on. It was very strict that I wasn't allowed to read it because Juha actually wanted to read it himself. It took them almost five years to get it read. In that time Jonna learned to read herself and she reads a lot. she has read all the Harry Potters and tons of other children's books. But she wasn't allowed to read Narnia herself because once again Juha wanted to read it too. Anyway they got it finished just before the movie came out. Talk about perfect timing!

Now Jonna started to read the book by herself and te speed is very different from the earlier. I think she'll get the first book read tomorrow. Narnia is worth seeing as a movie and also read as a book so go for it! Maybe I'll start reading it to Viivi so that I would get to read the other books too.

Triominos

Absolutely the best christmas present we got this year was the game called Triominos. It's like dominos but all the pawns or buttons are triangel shaped. It makes it much more interesting and challenging than dominos. We've been playing that a lot after christmas. We play it all together but many times after children's bed time we but on the radio and play it just the two of us. One thing we do differently than we are supposed to do. We don't count the points we play it just like domino.

When we lived in Colorado we had triominos there too. We loved playing it already then and I decided that we should have one in Finland too. It took almost ten years before I was able to find one from here (or actually before Santa had his helpers to make one for us :)).

I'm so glad that we now have triominos. I encourage every one of you to have one for yourselves too. It's so much more instructive, reasonable and enjoyable to spend time playing a good game than just staring the tv which I tend to do far to much on holidays.

By the way my brother has his own blog too. It's in Finnish but if you are an english speaker you might enjoy the pictures.